Mumbai: What's Islam Got To Do With It?By: Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, December 01, 2008

"Unfortunately, we have yet to see a distinguished popular condemnation in the traditional Arab or Muslim communities that strongly rejects what is happening in the name of Islam"

Who said that? What Islamophobe dared to call into question the sincerity or adequacy of Muslim condemnations of terrorism?

Would you believe Khaled al-Jenfawi, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Seyassah daily?

Anyway, in this story, "Muslims condemn Mumbai attacks, worry about image," by Karin Laub for The Associated Press, November 30, Muslim leaders and spokesmen worry a great deal about the possibility that the jihad attacks in Mumbai by a Tiny Minority of Extremists™ will lead people to think ill of Islam.

Of course, there is one thing they could do about that that would actually begin to make people think better of Islam, but no one even whispers anything about doing it in this article or anywhere else. Imams could begin to saturate mosques and madrassas with the message that jihad warfare is never justified, that the imperative to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law must be decisively rejected, and that peaceful coexistence as equals with unbelievers is to be maintained indefinitely. If Islamic clerics stopped talking about conquering Europe and America, and began to teach the opposite, things might begin to improve. If Muslim leaders worldwide energetically pronounced takfir upon -- that is, declared to be non-Muslim -- all those who maintained belief in the Qur'an's literal words of warfare, and in the traditional Islamic doctrines regarding jihad warfare (whether hot war or otherwise), and upon anyone who wished to impose Shari'a upon unbelievers by whatever means and at whatever speed, and if those leaders demonstrated their sincerity by actions instead of mere words, informed non-Muslims might begin to think better of Islam.

But these things will not happen. They're not even on the table. Instead, many of the same people quoted in this article work to brand any non-Muslim who points out the ways in which jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism as a "bigot" or a "racist." And that in itself, however effective a tactic it may be among the ignorant and easily intimidated, is revealing.

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